Running Against a Black Man, Benson Assumes She Has the Black Vote

View John James through the eyes of a black parent, and you’ll see why some black voters could find a new home in the Republican Party in 2026.

James is talented and accomplished. His career path took him from West Point to an Apache helicopter to the business world and then into politics.

He left Washington because he thought it was important to fix the state he’ll someday leave to his three sons.

James shows that you can reach the heights, in life and in politics, through hard work. He is the product of a two-parent home, and raises his three boys in a two-parent home.

The James family—he one he was born into, and the one he created with wife Liz—shows what’s possible what comes after you conquer generational curses. You start building legacies.

Jocelyn Benson, the Democrat nominee in the governor’s race, has only abortion, government dependency and a victimhood mentality to offer black people. John James shows what’s behind Door No. 2.

Now, view Jocelyn Benson through the eyes of a black woman.

“What they see is what they’ll be” is the idea undergirding a slogan we’ve all heard plenty of in recent years: “Representation matters.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was shrewd in 2018 when she picked Garlin Gilchrist as her running mate. Whitmer had lost Detroit to Shri Thanedar in the Democrat primary and would not leave anything to chance in the general election. Democrat math does not work without the black vote.

Whitmer chose a black son of suburban Detroit, and showed herself willing to play the game of politics.

Benson, on the other hand, went with a fellow white woman, Sen. Winnie Brinks, as her running mate. Where Whitmer was shrewd, Benson is selfish.

Picking Brinks is Benson applying “representation matters” to her own comfort level, rather than the voters of Michigan. It’s Benson assuming that the electorate is frozen in amber, and that black women will support her no matter what. What else are they going to do? Vote Republican?

Benson’s mentor, Hillary Clinton, could have told her what happens when you fail to balance the ticket. In 2016, Hillary Clinton tapped Tim Kaine was her running mate. After eight years of Obama, Clinton reverted the Democrats back to an all-white ticket. Voters didn’t buy it, and she lost to Donald Trump, including in Michigan, where Trump only won by 10,000 votes.

Republicans give Benson the ick, so she’s assuming—there goes that word again—that black women will feel the same way.

And in a normal year, they might. But not with a man who reminds them of their son on the ballot.

When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, I supported him even though I was a Republican. (I didn’t like John McCain, then or now.)

I wrote about this in the Detroit News. Here’s what I had to say:

“When conservative friends ask how I can support a standard-issue liberal, I think of my unborn grandchildren. When those kids ask whom I voted for in 2008, I can't imagine telling them that I bypassed what is possibly a once-in-a-lifetime chance to vote for a candidate of African descent.”

I’m a student of history. Back then, I thought it would be cool to have someone who looks like me on the back page of the history book, among the pictures of the presidents.

But the distinction between “African descent” and “black American” was not as clear to me as it should have been.

Barack Obama was not a heritage black American. He was an international arrival with just enough black dust sprinkled on him to qualify for “first.”

The guy’s middle name is Hussein. That should have been my first clue something was not quite right. Only when the second black candidate’s middle name was Devi was it clear to black people that Democrats never route these opportunities to heritage black Americans.

I say that to say this: When presented with a chance to rewrite history, people do things they would not normally do. They vote how they would not normally vote.

“Third woman governor,” as Benson wants to be, does not motivate people. Given that the first two—Jennifer Granholm and Whitmer—brought Lost Decades to Michigan, it’s closer to a demerit.

But “first black governor” still has some currency in a community low on firsts.

And unlike Obama, John James actually is one of us. He changes the permission structure for black voters in a way not seen in decades.

And unlike Wayne County Executive Bill Lucas in 1986, James is running for an open seat, not against a popular incumbent. With two months until Election Day, it’s anybody’s game.

Jocelyn Benson is assuming that old ways, old patterns and old habits will hold in 2026. She is playing a dangerous game.

Jocelyn Benson thinks she has the black vote in the bag. I wouldn’t be so sure about that.